Paradise for the Damned. - 10. Chapter 10

Claude took a deep breath then opened the door to the Aurin cottage. The room had an earthen glow in the waning afternoon light. In a soiled chemise and joint hose, Guy was merrily alive at the table, humming and dabbing his sword with an oiled muff. Guy still forbade him from touching the sword, and Claude had yet to summon the mischief to disobey. With a width no wider than a man’s thumb, the sword was a strange-looking blade of a long single-edged design. Sabrine had claimed it was bestowed of Roland Delayer’s munificence. Of this man Guy volunteered nothing, and Claude thought he felt the aura leaden and wreck ruin upon his thin spirit whenever the name came up. Sabrine further claimed the sword intimated of Guy’s high stature. What exactly was Guy’s stature or his supposed aristocratic milieu Claude did not ask, even now as the tutor bent over the table to inspect the sword, his croup round and pointed to him as if offering a carnal dessert.

Guy turned to him, one crafty eye raised over the other. “Bless me. You came back. I was about to set out and make claim on your life.”

Claude felt the cold breathe over his nape. “No need now.”

“Perhaps.” Guy waved the white sword in a mock dueling stance, and on noting Claude’s lurching away, he placed it on the table with wry look on his face. “We must teach you how to fence first. I can’t have rogues taking you before me.”

His lips pulled back from the mouth, and perfect teeth shone. Perfect teeth, etched eyes. Tumbling into a lake of unease, Claude shuffled away the inner chamber. It had since reclaimed Guy’s wild manners. Beddings rumpled, clothes rumpled, shoes displaced. His own cloak and doublet he dropped onto a mound of hoses on the ground. Cleaning and being the servant would occur later. And what was left of the purse after paying for Leo and Alphonse’s female companions, their heaven-cursed gambling and bad wine, he tossed into Guy’s money chest. He let out a long stream of air and still felt the stodgy unease fester in his chest and ventured to face Guy again.

He took Guy’s side as if it were his to claim and took Guy’s hand as if it were his to hold. “I—”

“You stink of sex and shit.”

He surrendered Guy’s hands. The words of apology and respect were still hard in forming. He leaned his head on Guy’s arm and hoped apology was apparent.

Guy re-sheathed his sword and tossed it on the table.

Its long white gleam lay starkly against the wood grain of the table, and Claude was clouded with fright. With a sway of the arm he moved to shift the sword away from his sight, but Guy fended off his human hands and swept aside the sword himself.

“No good comes of that,” Claude said, feeling bold again, “I shall be the good student.”

“And what’s my reward for teaching dirty dense things?”

“I offer payment. ’Tis you who refuse it.”

With tired motions Guy got up from the bench and hung his sword on the wall. He returned to his seat just as pensive. “I find no pleasure in unspeakable passions. I am innocent of such filthy deeds. I am a man of the cunny.” Claude scowled and displayed an obligatory look of disbelief. Guy touched Claude’s cheek and smiled curtly. “What would I with a black body and black soul? There’s nothing left for me to mar it.”

Waning with a cold and naked feeling, Claude brushed Guy’s hand away. He was nothing. Clovis had been right. He was nothing but the muck of the river. He fidgeted. “I have naught for you. I shall trouble you no—”

“Claude, Claude…” To seat him down Guy’s hands slapped on Claude’s shoulders, like an axe falling. Claude held his breath to a sudden flush of fright but obliged wordlessly. The hand drifted over the linen looseness of his chemise, commencing the crawl of a warming tingle down his chest. He tensed and looked hopefully at the shadowed hand palming his left breast. A moist heat seeped down into the small of his back, and thoughts flurried in disarray over needs and wants. Whatever Guy wanted he was of a mind to allow it. He was also of a mind to refrain from condemning his tutor’s contradictions or uncouth manners. But Guy’s hands plowed a ferocious course for his bare chest, ripping his chemise. The nasty tearing sound shook Claude out of his complaisant frame of mind, and he cried. “You tore it. Now I must mend it.” His hands scrambled over the frayed ends of the fabric, but Guy stamped his hand over his heart.

“You have something I own.”

The hand had become a grapnel with nails mysteriously lengthening and sharpening and clawing into his skin. Claude’s heart pumped lye and vinegar. He yelped, “Blessed Mother,” yanking on the wrist to free himself. But Guy’s eyes had slit into shards of glowing red, rubies on a mask of ivory. His mouth yawned wide a wolf’s maw, a furious cavern of white fangs dripping spit on Claude’s chin. Claude’s strength faltered. He glared inward, muttering brutally, “AveAveAveChriste,” frantic prayers before the angry God who has finally come to deal judgment. A laughed frothed from Guy’s jagged mouth, hearty, expansive, a sludge of black and blue mold.

The walls seemed to loom higher and hem in closer, and Claude quickened to bolt. But Guy snatched his neck and twisted branch fingers around Claude’s throat, damming his yelps shut. Another hand clawed its talons into his left breast, and blood dribbled where fingertips hooked into his chest.

“I marked you the day we first met. I marked you and declared your life mine alone.” Fangs pointed over the Claude’s eyes. His vision grew dim to its baleful gleam. “How now will you submit?” Guy’s voice resounded within the collapsing hull of Claude’s mind.

Kneel, bend, submit. Already Claude’s knees slid to obey. His spirit was cut and rent like his ripped chemise, and his body was flopping over limply in Guy’s hold. Already he had proven himself human; for this is what humans do, they bend before God, before king, before master, before priest, before the wife who mistakes her fig for a beard. They all bend, and now he must bend before a demon. Truly the Devil had come to stake his claim. Already his soul was splintering like a strained cord as infernal miasma from Guy’s mouth breathed over Claude’s nostrils.

Claude felt his heart swell up against the constricting cage of his chest. It would burst, but he grasped for smiles. There should be good in leaving life early. The lucky escape from the wife with black teeth, or the mewling whelps, or the hard toil just to keep a semblance of meaning. Antoine Le Salle should be waiting for him in hell. This, in the end, was good.

Just as Claude was thinking that Antoine would frown in seeing him too early, Guy let go. “Not today. I did agree to teach you your letters.”

Claude twisted away, whooping and panting. Harsh rivers of sweat sheeted over his eyes. He propped his trembling elbows on the table and forced upon himself the calm to sit upright and not bolt from the grotesque object beside him.

Guy sucked boisterously the blood juices off his fingers. “You taste good.”

“Thou damnéd dog,” he said, winded, “You killed Gigot. You murdered him.”

“Bless my cock, you would that I eat your heart now?” Guy laughed with all the jocosity that glowing red eyes and fangs could allow. “A shame, dying before you know how to ride a horse.” He reached out to touch the blood dripping down his neck. Before the hands could touch, Claude flinched violently, and Guy bayed a wild laughter. “Bless me, you still want me as tutor?”

The question imported no meaning. Claude panted more violently now. He tried to rest his face on his palms, but his hands kept slipping. He tried to be composed, be proud before this thing, this thing who had been thinking of killing him even as he praised his blond hair, or palmed his cheeks, or patted his head and called his French atrocious. He had been an idiot. Claude crumbled, naked and trembling, before his squall of stupidity and shame.

“You look sickly,” Guy said. “You may leave me if you wish. Go have some air. Go bend over to your men with golden balls. My time is long. ’Tis simple to find you whenever comes time to collect the debt due me.”

“You greedy sprite! My life is of my own.” Claude’s fist uncurled quaveringly on the table.

Guy’s eyes relaxed into a diaphanous shade of green as fangs retracted and serenity sheeted over his face. “Upon my blood honor, I shall drain you of blood and carve out your heart. You shall bend. You shall beg me to relent my hunger. Stay, flee, curse me, insult me, the debt will ever remain.” He pooled his hair back and smiled a little while Claude’s heart thumped to a clamor.

Guy arose from the table and took the lute off the wall. The merry demon sat itself again with a purpose for melody. Bright music commenced, and Claude felt the damp on his face harden into a snakeskin of ice. He was mired in the mud of indecision. Escape, yell to the villagers of the demon in human clothing, scrabble at the priest’s cassock and beg for absolution and salvation—this would be demanded of him by God and men. Guy was practicing arpeggios now, and humming layered thinly over the messy scales. In the wave of the insouciant strums, he was rendered of feeling but left with the heavy rod of pain in his neck, the bloody imprint of Guy’s hand on his breast biting and stinging.

His gaze turned listlessly to the window and its portrait of the chestnut tree and its black leaves dazzling crystal and bleary in the sunlight—just like the day he gathered up Antoine broken and bleeding before the steps of the Senachausée.

How could I have forgotten?

Antoine felt worse, suffered worse, bled worse, but he ne’er submitted to the rods, gears, and wheels of the torture patrons. Never. Now he was cowering before this foul imp when the Sissy had endured three months before the relentless machines of righteousness. Disgust overwhelmed his senses. The weeds of weakness had ravaged him indeed.

A brilliant awareness burst through his pall of pain: heaven would never be his portion. Striving for grace was useless. Nothing good was accorded to men of heretical proclivities. Easier to frolic and gambol in the jig of damnation. As for the debt … all men must die. Claude stole a glance at Guy’s face hard in concentration and wondered if Guy was in the end just a man like him.

Claude’s foot stamped to stop its silly quivering. Still his teeth chattered as he tried to return grin for grin. And he decided. He would stay and use the demon for its talents. He would work hard on his studies and his skills, do whatever it was men did to achieve a good name. And in the fullness of time, Guy could have the rumpled refuse of his heart, God could have his tattered soul to halve and quarter, but he would be tall and proud even unto death.